This startup wants to transform China’s $10b trade show market

Although people are quickly shifting online, brick-and-mortar trade shows and exhibitions still hold an important position in the business world for companies that want to expand their customer base and build reliable brands: face-to-face meetings on trade shows drive contracts worth $1 trillion per year.

Despite all the costs of buying a booth, staff training, and traveling, exhibitors come to trade shows in the hope of meeting potential customers who are interested in their products or services, and best of all, who are ready to commit to a deal. So it is of crucial importance for trade show organizers to get relevant and professional attendees.

Expo market hasn’t changed for years. Till now, most of the organizers still stick to the traditional way of attracting attendees, such as sending promotional emails, making phone calls and partnership with advertising agencies. Efficiency is still very low. The case is even worse when they want to attract overseas visitors.

ExpoPromoter is a platform which uses data and machine learning technologies to find professional and qualified buyers from all over the world. They provide a hub for any services that might be needed by someone organizing events such as conferences and exhibitions. This includes high-end services for trade show organizers, exhibitors, and visitors: online ticket ordering, stand booking, and attracting attendees.

After submitting attendee profiles to ExpoPromoter, trade show organizers can get their events listed on the promotion banners on over 6,000 partner sites of the platform, which includes, advertising agencies, web masters, event catalogues, and more. Users who click on the banners can fill in a registration form for purchasing the ticket and receive recommendations for similar events in the future.

“The organizers only pay for qualified visitors, or a percentage of expo stand sold. They pay $9 for qualified user registration data and an extra $35 for each attendee if we convert them to incoming attendees,” introduced Hennadiy Netyaha the founder and Global CEO of ExpoPromoter. “We also provide customer support for them, like people from Russia or Europe, we can translate for them.”

“We brought a win-win situation to everyone. Visitors find interesting trade shows more easily, organizers find qualified participants, which will in turn drive booth sales and revenue. Exhibitors get more contract deals and our partners get channels to monetize their traffic,” said Netyaha.

ExpoPromoter already signed contracts with 800 exhibitions and delivered 1 million attendees with a high growth margin of 66%.

The five-year-old startup was founded by a global team with over 50 employees worldwide. Ukrainian founder and CEO Hennadiy Netyaha is a serial entrepreneur who has had five exits in his previous projects, also he a track record of more than 20 years in the exhibition and internet sectors. China head Simon Zagaynov is a trade show veteran coming from Russia. COO Katerina Kachan has ten years experience in e-commerce.

Now operating three offices in London, Kiev, and Shanghai, Netyaha told us the firm is directing a special focus on the Chinese market in the future not only because of the market size but also the innovation here.

“The worldwide market capacity for trade shows is $55 billion. China, which represents $10 billion, is the second largest market in this industry, next only to the US. Two years ago we had a choice between US and Chinese market. Although the US trade show market right now is bigger than the China, we find the market here is more vibrant. We found that main thing in China is you fell this drive. Everyone wants to work here to get their goals and they crave success. You can feel this drive and this is good for business,” said the CEO.